Literary Theory
Series 2: Handout #5
Michel Foucault, the
personification of “Theory”; its other patron saint, after Derrida. He ties together Marx, Nietzsche, (rejects
Freud and Sartre), and Derrida, builds on foundations laid by Gramsci, Althusser (his mentor—as
if you couldn’t tell, ISAs and RSAs
aplenty in Foucault), and he is the #1 influence on New Historicism and,
probably, contemporary theory. His BIG
IDEA (well, it’s Nietzsche’s too): it’s all about
POWER. Remember Bentham’s
panopticon?
“Discipline and Punish” (1975): They
left out the really shocking introduction (a description of a brutal execution),
which covers the origins of the disciplinary system—the carceral network—of the modern world:
the mechanisms of the penal system (like other forms of systematic power) grew
by “slow, continuous, imperceptible gradation” (vast regime of panoptic, public
surveillance via institutions); disciplinary
institutions that define with licit and illicit, the sane and the insane,
with very precise gradients; these institutions create a whole system of
professional classes who see themselves as serving society, humane, etc. MAIN IDEA: Power is enhanced when it becomes
pervasive, unnoticed, professionalized, and defined as humane. Love is power, baby. And it’s bigger than the both of us.
Q. Is “Literature” a scam perpetrated
on the ignorant for the enhancement of various discourses of power? Is the ultimate purpose of your literary
education to be taught to transcend such absurdities and/or learn how to use
the “aura” of the literary to extend the discourses of power in which you are
enmeshed? In other words, to know where
your power lies and not be confused about it with a lot of sentimental rubbish
about Truth and Love and all that.
Q. What is your job as a
teacher? Or a writer? What do you THINK it is?
BIG
Q. Does Foucault allow the
possibility of resistance to power? Does
“power” become some kind of transcendent signifier for him? A substitute for the deity? What about plain old entropy? Don’t systems break down? What caused the fall of
Q. Want to try some
more new historicist contextualizations?